A cuckoo in every corrie... a cacophony round the castle..

 The peace of our crossing to Loch Ranza in NW Arran was temporarily broken by the rumble of the MV Loch Tarbert's engines. She was running on the route from Lochranza to Claonaig on Kintyre. She soon passed on and silence returned....well not quite. The eerie calls of the divers in mid-channel were replaced by a cacophony of cuckoos calling from the corries..

There seemed to be at least four cuckoos. One in Glen Catacol to the south. One in the Coille Mor corrie, high above Lochranza village,...

...one from a corrie high on the slopes above the NE side of Loch Ranza and...

 ...at least one more, high in one of the corries above Glen Chalmadale. What an aural welcome the cuckoos made as we paddled into misty Loch Ranza as these...

 ...two yachts were preparing to leave. It was with some satisfaction that I told their crew we had been up early and had already crossed from Kintyre!

We continued up Loch Ranza as far as the peninsula upon which...

 ...the ancient walls of...

 Lochranza Castle had stood for centuries..

Like Skipness Castle across the Kilbrannan Sound (which we had passed the previous day), Lochranza Castle had originally been built by the MacSweens to control the north end of the Kilbrannan Sound. With the sound of the Lochranza cuckoos echoing round the hills, we decided to stop and explore....

Threading through the 2011 Oban Sailing Club Round Mull Race.

Gradually we left the Isles of the Sea a long way behind but as we approached the coast of Mull we came across the third day of the 2011 Oban Yacht Club Round Mull Race....nearly two score of them! They made a wonderful sight, broad reaching up the Firth of Lorn in close, line astern formation as they came round Malcolm's Point on the Ross of Mull. However, they posed an almost impenetrable barrier to our progress, as we were travelling at right angles to the fleet.

We were completely knackered by our long, hot day, so we paused for some sustenance (with the distant Paps of Jura behind) before summoning the energy to sprint in tight formation...

...through one of the more sizeable gaps before the finishing line off Frank Lockwood's island.. We felt a bit like Drake sailing into the Armada but fortunately we squeezed through without anyone having to alter course or fire a broadside. I drew breath to admire the fine set of the spinnaker on this lovely yacht. Vaila is a Borresen BB10  which, as her type suggests, is 10m (32 feet) long. We have passed her several times in various places on the west coast, from Loch Fyne to Loch Linnhe, over the last 10 years or so. We have seen her most often in Loch Leven, which I think is her home water.

I used to be a sailor before I took up sea kayaking. What you don't see is what is fluttering away in a yacht's wake. Modern yachts are made up of a composite of resins and special hydrocarbon laminates. Out with yachting circles, these laminates are better known as £50 notes and unfortunately for yachties, the composite resin is partially water soluble. This explains why yachts have somewhat expensive wakes.

 Anyway I digress, we now had open water between us and the entrance to...

 ...lovely Loch Buie where we...

...landed and set up camp in the late evening.

The view from the summit of Little Ross Island.

From the summit of Little Ross Island we looked west down to the waters of The Sound with the point of Fox Craig beyond. It is often instructive to view paddling conditions from above.

From sea level, just 20 minutes before, the wide angle lens made the conditions look much calmer than they actually were.

The tide race was swirling round the south end of Little Ross and this was wind with tide! This large yacht was making her way up to Kirkcudbright from the Isles of Fleet where she had spent Saturday night. She had reached down under foresail alone. Because there was live firing on the range she.had to pass within 200m of the SE shore of Little Ross so she started her engine and motor sailed in before hoisting her main once in the more sheltered waters of the bay.

This is the view east from Little Ross and all the sea and land in the photo is in the exclusion zone when the range is firing. In the middle distance, Gypsy Point marks the far side of Kirkcudbright Bay. In the far distance, Abbey Head is 7km away and the firing range extends a further 3km beyond it. Despite the wind, the noise of medium and large calibre firing travelled far over the water.The flood tide runs east along this coast and the ebb west. At springs the tide makes 4 knots in each direction.

As we did not want to paddle north up Kirkcudbright Bay against the 3.5 knot ebb tide (I stopped using my Greenland paddle for everyday use after the last time I did that!) it was now time to make our way back to our kayaks to catch the end of the flood. The lower light at the north end of the island is aligned with the lighthouse astern  to give a transit for boats to find the start of the buoyed channel up the River Dee to Kirkcudbright.

As we approached the store at the west quay, the Gallovidian III was still at anchor on range duty but the other recreational boats were already making their way up river to avoid the ebb tide.

A passing Romilly in Kirkcudbright Bay.

 As we approached Little Ross Island the wind began to increase and...

 ...many of the boats, that had passed us, either anchored in the lee of the island or turned back for Kirkcudbright. This beautiful balanced lug yawl caught my eye. Her solo helmsman quickly and expertly reefed her two sails for the sail back up Kirkcudbright Bay.

She is a 22 foot Romilly, a design by Nigel Irens. A particular feature is her freestanding carbon fibre masts and spars. Her name is Speedwell and her owner David Collin has sailed her out of Kirkcudbright Bay since 2000. Very nice indeed...almost enough to make me interested in boat owning again but I am not sure if a Romilly would survive...

...the White Steeds of the Solway, at a tidal mooring in Fleet Bay, due to her lying on her side when drying out.

A busy waterway at Kennacraig.

 We approached the pier at Kennacraig cautiously. It was 12:22 and the ferry was not due to leave until 13:00 but they do sometimes fit in extra sailings... So we went along the shore and before heading out past her stern noticed 3 things. 1. the MV Finlaggan was securely moored.. 2. They had not started loading the long queue of cars and lorries. 3. We were being watched from the bridge. So...

 ...we nipped round her stern without delay. The MV Finlaggan is one of the newer ferries in the Calmac fleet. She was built in Poland in 2011 specifically for the Islay route but she also provides winter relief for the Skye/North Uist/Harris route. She is 90m long with a gross tonnage of 5,209 tons and can carry 550 passengers and 85 cars.

 Once past Kennacraig we still had to keep a sharp lookout for other maritime traffic...

...such as FV Silver Lining III (TT37), a 16.6m wooden scallop dredger that was heading out from the quay at West Tarbert at the head of the loch. Her home port is Kilkeel in Northern Ireland and she was built in 1973.

Sea Fever

I have not posted for a while. This has been partly due to the poor weather but mainly due to a painful dislocation of my knee, trying to lift my kayak some time before Christmas. It has been hard not going down to the sea for such a long time. Last Saturday the forecast was for F3 gusting F4 NW winds so we convened at Seafield on the south Ayrshire coast with the intention of paddling down to Culzean Bay and back. When we arrived, there were white horses to the horizon and waves were breaking high into the air at the base of the Heads of Ayr. My handheld anemometer showed the wind was F5-F6. When Tony left his house, just up the road, the temperature was minus 6C. We didn't much like the look of this, but we were so desperate to get out again that we turned round and headed north to more sheltered waters off  Largs, further up the Firth of Clyde.

 Here the conditions were much more to our liking. A light F3 NW meant we were off...

 ...paddle sailing at 10km/hr into a 1.5km/hr adverse tide.

We were bound for the Little Cumbrae island which...

...lies between Largs and the mountains of Arran beyond.

 We soon left the douce Victorian villas of Great Cumbrae behind and...

...set off across the Tan towards...

...the Little Cumbrae and its tiny satellite, Castle Island.

How's your roll?

 Just beyond the heavy industrial land of Hunterston...

 ...we were back on a wild stretch of coast. The Three Sisters of Hunterston were formed during the current Holocene period, when brash ice erosion rapidly cut the cliff line as the land rose at the end of the last ice age. Once the ice melted, the land continued to rise but the rate of erosion slowed leaving a rock platform at the base of the cliffs. Caves in the cliffs were inhabited as the area was populated following the retreat of the ice. The stunning Hunterston brooch was found here in 1830. It dates from about 700AD and is finely worked in gold and silver with amber decoration.

As we approached the end of our paddle, Colin and Andrew were somewhat overheated from keeping up with the kayak sailors.

As we approached Portencross Castle, Andrew asked me "How's your roll?" As I was looking forward to it with some relish, I said that it had bacon, lettuce and tomato with a thin spread of mayonnaise. Then, as Mike, Phil and I landed, Andrew and Colin cooled themselves with lots of rolling and thrashing about in the icy water. I watched them as I munched my roll and I realised that sea kayaking encompasses a very broad church of activity.

The shift in wind from SW to NW and our choice of launch site in the SE meant that we sailed the whole of this 30km circumnavigation of the Cumbraes. Yes, paddle sailing your sea kayak is a whole heap of fun, even though it might lead to excommunication!

Leaving Glencallum Bay under sail.

 All too soon our sojourn at Glencallum Bay came to an end.

 The breeze picked up as soon...

 ...as we left the bay and...

 ...cleared the Rubh, an Eun lighthousen on...

...our way across the Firth of Cyle Channel to the Cumbraes.

Dodging Autumn on an autumn day.

It had turned into a glorious autumn day as we left the east coast of Bute and sailed back across the Firth of Clyde channel...

 ...dodging ships like this tanker (MV Autumn 13.8 knots)...

 ...until we rounded the north end of the Great Cumbrae Island and dodged the Calmac ferry, MV Loch Shira...

 ...on our way back to Largs marina.

Before we landed on the sands below the slipway...

 ...we had to dodge our way through several racing fleets of 420s, Lasers, Toppers and Optimists.

Our rigs attracted a fair bit of attention from the sailors yet 130 years ago kayak sailing rigs were a common sight on the Clyde.